Below are the best of the questions and answers that occurred during our TechNet Webcast entitled, "SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 1 of 6): Planning and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007"

John Weston was kind enough to help out with the questions and answers during the webcast. Much of what you see below is either specifically his answer, or based on the answer he gave during the session. I've expanded upon them some - but basically this was possible as a result of his effort, and I wanted to give him credit here. Thanks, John!

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Questions and Answers

“So how did you hide the product key in LiveMeeting? We (at <our company>) present to LOB people and would like to do that! (or is this a pre-recording?)”

There isn’t a way to do that magically. The webcast is live. But the demos for these sessions have been pre-recorded, and I talk through the steps. I suspect that they edited that part to show you X's instead of the key.

Many of the steps that we take to install and configure SharePoint take a lot of time, and we certainly don’t want to wait for these during a webcast so showing a recording of the process works a lot better. And it allows me to speak to many more important points relating to each demo, while the demo steps are being carried out. This is something that I wouldn’t be able to do if I were concentrating on “click here”, and “scroll there”.

“Why is the speaker still running/installing MOSS 2007 beta code?”

See the previous answer.. And now consider that there has been a great deal of time between when the recordings were made and the present day.

We did an advanced install, complete – meaning we installed everything on the one server, with the assumption that we have A) an already-installed SQL server, and B) the desire to expand and add servers to the farm at some later time (as opposed to the "basic" install)

“Why wasn't this included in the scope of the presentation? Security is still important....”

There are many security-specific events and webcasts available. This webcast wasn’t just about security. The webcast I’m doing (part 5 of 6 in this series) on January 28th is more specifically about Security in SharePoint Server 2007.

“Will this be available after this LiveMeeting is complete? Some others on my team would be interested in watching this”

Yes, you get an email follow-up after attending the live webcast. That will have information on how to view the recording. You can also follow the same link you did to sign up for this webcast originally. (CLICK HERE) It usually takes 24-48 hours to get the recording processed and available for download.

“Are there any guidelines about the number of users or amount of traffic that would be appropriate for each scenario?”

Windows Server 2008 is not shipping yet, so 'nothing' is officially supported on it yet until the product ships. However, it’s a safe assumption that it will be a fully supported platform for both WSS and MOSS.

“If we want to limit the scope of searches from pulling unathorized data, do we have to use seperate SSPs?”

Actually, no. That’s a huge improvement in MOSS 2007 over the old Portal Server search. All search results are “security trimmed”, so the user will only see results that they have access to. No longer will they have a page come up in the results that is then inaccessible to them after they click the link.

“Love this presentation! Recommend not scrolling because the refresh rate is too low. Jumping would be better...thanks!”

Thank you for letting us know. Good to know you are enjoying the presentation. The jumpiness you see is a bandwidth limitation on sharing the screen for the demos. Hopefully you were still able to get the majority of the good stuff.

“Is there someone I can contact that would know about Microsoft Visual SourceSafe and whether it can be integrated with SharePoint?”

“Is there a VM with SharePoint 2007 already set up as a single server?”

I know we have made these available for other products, but I can’t find one that has SharePoint 2007. If you’d like to play with either SharePoint Services or Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a hosted virtual lab, you can find those HERE.

“If I do set an incremental crawl to run say every 2min, what impact would that have on the database?”

I’d say the impact on the database would be minimal.. but I’d be more concerned about the processing overhead on the server doing the crawl, and on the

“What of the concepts viewed here does not apply to WSS 3.0?”

Most everything related to basic document library management applies. Check here for a description/side-by-side comparison of WSS with MOSS.

“What are the MS course numbers which apply to setting up and administering a Sharepoint 2007 farm?”

“Are the Accounts that are needed for Index and Searching need to be domain or local accounts?”

I would recommend they be domain accounts that you set up specifically for the task at hand. Give them rights to access any/all the content locations that you will want to crawl and then index. Lock it down with a very VERY long, ultra-secure password.

“My organization is evaluating SharePoint for Document Managment initially. As we move forward we anticipate expanding to provide business inteligence.”

Fantastic. Yeah.. a big benefit of this product is that you can roll out and expand it as you go and grow into the functionality available. And SharePoint Search will even help you with your speling. (Sorry.. I couldn’t resist.)

“When you choose "Windows Authentication" what account does it use across the farm, The machine account? the domain admin account? What SQL login account is used to access the DB? Can I send you a spreadsheet (I creted) to reveiw of the MS permissions recommended by using the ‘Least Security’ principle for a server farm? if so what email would you like me to send it to ?”

“Upgrading from SPPS 2003 and migrating to new hardware-single server-what do you suggest?”

For information on the planning and steps required to move from SPS to MOSS, check HERE.

Can a Document library be migrated to a departmental site at a later time, if we deploy just the library in the beginning?”

Absolutely

“HOW CAN I SECURE PDF'S FILES ALLOCATED IN DOCUMENT LIBRARIES? TO PREVENT SAVE ITS TO USER LOCAL DISK”

I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking (or WHY YOU’RE SHOUTING), but I think you’re asking me about something that is provided by information rights management (IRM). Not only can you protect content with-in file shares and now document libraries, but you can also associate rights with the file itself – so that, as you ask in your example, some documents may be viewable but NOT allowed to be saved or forwarded in e-mail.

It all can be virtualized.. but as I said in the webcast; what you virtualize depend greatly on the performance requirements matched with the available performance of your virtualization host server(s). Some aspects are easier to virtualize. Web front end apps are good candidates. SQL Servers are less likely to run well virtualized due to the processing and the fast access you’ll want – but again, with a beefy virtualization host and not-so-heavy-use, you’ll be fine there as well. So… “it depends”.